Jazz singer takes pop detour

Lots of musicians have second careers. Not so many of those
second careers are also as musicians.

Megan Birdsall is a respected, established straight-ahead jazz
singer out of Kansas City, Mo., with a CD, 2008's "Little Jazz
Bird," to her name.

MBird is a pop-rock-folk singer, on her first national tour in
support of her first album, "Over the Bones."

That they're one and the same person would be even more
confusing, Megan "MBird" Birdsall explained, if she didn't perform
her separate styles under different names.

"I was pretty content and happy working in the jazz world,"
Birdsall said by phone recently. "I got sick for a while there. I
had a kind of rare thing happen to my jaw ---- my jaw was fusing to
my skull."

Doctors were able to save her life through surgery, but the
recuperation and physical effects of the surgery ended up changing
her career.

"Afterward was a pretty silent time for me, for a while. For
about six months I was silent. But there was a lot of music still
happening inside of me, because I hadn't gone for more than two
weeks without a show for two years."

She thought she could stay in the business as a songwriter: "I
knew I'd be able to sing, but I didn't know if it would be at a
professional level. Writing these songs, I thought maybe I could
get them to someone and maybe sell them to someone who could really
sing them."

Birdsall said after writing the new songs that had come to her
during her recuperation, she managed to get a tape of the songs
into the hands of Poco member Jack Sundrud, who also works as a
producer.

"He took a listen and then met with me. I was still a little
gross when I met him ---- I was still in wires. I played him some
demos, and he really liked them and he thought it would be a really
good idea if I sang them. I was a little unsure of that, but it
felt really good."

At that point, Birdsall said she realized she needed some kind
of marketing approach so as not to confuse her existing fans.

"How do we do this so people aren't like, 'But ... I thought you
sing jazz?'"

While she still performs jazz when she's at home in Kansas City,
Birdsall said she's still relearning how to sing, because her
condition and resulting surgery changed the physical structure of
her throat.

"It's all very new, because I've only been in recovery from the
surgery for two years. The initial recovery period for everything
---- for the muscles to reattach to the bones ---- is a year and a
half. Three years is where I'll know what it's going to feel like
for the rest of my life."

After years of singing standards from the Great American
Songbook in her jazz career, Birdsall said she's also still
adapting to singing her own material as MBird.